Elementary School Smoking Prevention Program

Cigarette smoking is one of the most important public health problems facing America,accounting for an estimated 430,000 deaths per year. While considerable progress has been made inrecent years toward the development of effective smoking prevention approaches, those efforts havenot yet been translated into curricula which schools can use. Not surprisingly, smoking prevalence ratesamong youth have remained largely unchanged over the past decade, despite substantial declines amongadults. This Phase l is intended to remedy that situation by providing commercially viable smokingprevention curriculum materials for elementary school students in grades 4, 5, and 6. These materialswill be based on a state-of-the-art smoking prevention approach which includes resistance skills trainingand training in an array of general life skills. The model upon which the smoking prevention curriculummaterials to be developed has been demonstrated to reduce cigarette smoking by up to 87%. Thesecurriculum materials will be designed to be used either alone or in combination with the junior highschool curriculum materials currently being developed under another SBIR. The resulting product willbe an attractive and easy-to-use set of smoking prevention materials for elementary school childrenwhich can be marketed in the US and Canada.